In this study, we examine the cost effectiveness of carvedilol for the treatment of chronic heart failure (CHF).

We use a Markov model to project life expectancy and lifetime medical care costs for a hypothetical cohort of patients with CHF who were assumed alternatively to receive carvedilol plus conventional therapy (digoxin, diuretics, and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors) or conventional therapy alone.

Patients on carvedilol were assumed to experience a reduced risk of death and hospitalization for CHF, which is consistent with findings from the US Carvedilol Heart Failure Trials Program.

The benefits of carvedilol were projected under 2 alternative scenarios.

In the first ( « limited benefits »), benefits were conservatively assumed to persist for 6 months, the average duration of follow-up in these clinical trials, and then end abruptly.

In the other ( « extended benefits »), they were arbitrarily assumed to persist for 6 months and then decline gradually over time, vanishing by the end of 3 years.

We estimated our model using data from the US Carvedilol Heart Failure Trials Program and other i sources.

For patients receiving conventional therapy alone, estimated life expectancy was 6.67 years ; corresponding figures for those also receiving carvedilol were 6.98 and 7.62 years under the limited and extended benefits scenarios, respectively. (...)